Despite Gloom, Hiring Picks Up in Some Fields
Executive search consultants said Friday that hiring of marketing and product management personnel is picking up, perhaps indicating the beginning of a recovery as companies stop paring costs and again look to expand.
And retailers, who boosted hiring nationwide by 133,000 in February, reported that they are moving forward with planned store expansions, a move certain to increase employment nationwide in the coming months.
“I don’t think it’s a big boom, but clearly there are signs of increased activity,” said Bob Rollo, managing director in the Los Angeles office of Korn/Ferry International.
He said stepped-up hiring has occurred “pretty much across the board, with the Midwest leading the way” and the two coasts lagging. For California, Rollo said the brightest sign is in real estate. There are signs of increased hiring activity by development, construction and mortgage firms.
Howard Bratches, a partner with Thorndike Deland Associates, a search firm in New York, said his firm has seen healthy hiring at small medical-biotech and retailing companies.
“There has been a real pent-up demand,” he said. “If there’s any light at the end of the tunnel, it’s retail and health care.”
The upbeat talk by employment officials comes on the heels of the Labor Department’s unemployment report, which included an unexpectedly large increase in the number of new non-farm jobs created nationwide in February. Eighty-one percent of the 164,000-job increase was accounted for by the troubled retail industry, the government said. In addition, the services industry added about 50,000 jobs, many of them in health care.
William G. Barron Jr., deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, advised caution in assessing the boost in jobs. He noted that the numbers could have been skewed by adjustments to screen out seasonal factors. The recession has wreaked havoc with jobs numbers, and the bureau has been forced to drastically revise many of its monthly reports.
The hiring outlook for California, especially the Los Angeles area, continues to be fairly grim, economists say. Although total state employment grew by 22,000 jobs, that number is offset by a growing labor force. The number of people reaching working age plus the number of people immigrating to California are keeping the unemployment rate high. The February rate was 8.7%, well above the nation’s 7.3%.
The state unemployment rate and total employment numbers “are opposite readings,” said Lynn Reasor, chief economist for First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles. “But if you put the two together, the message is that California continues to be weak in terms of job performance.”
Even so, Clothestime Inc., an Anaheim-based off-price retailer, is going forward with plans for opening 60 to 65 new stores this year, including 13 in March. Each will be staffed by four or five employees.
“While we’re being cautious,” said David Sejpal, vice president and chief financial officer, “we are going through with the expansion.” The hirings should boost Clothestime’s 3,600-person payroll by about 10%.
In Silicon Valley, which has suffered thousands of layoffs during the nearly two-year recession, software maker Intuit Inc. bucked the trend by holding a job fair last month. The 305-employee company, which makes a leading finance computer software product called Quicken, sought candidates to fill 100 new positions in sales and customer service. About 600 people applied, said company spokeswoman Pam Barnett.
Dayton Hudson Corp., a department and discount store company based in Minneapolis, said that it has done no hiring in response to stronger business but that its long-range expansion plan is continuing. A spokeswoman said the company’s Target discount chain plans to hire about 2,200 people to staff 11 new stores this month.
Elsewhere in the manufacturing-dominated Midwest, economists said that February brought little sign of increased hiring but that a rise in purchasing orders might herald a payroll boost over the next several months.
Regardless of the hopeful signs, economists warned not to read too much into the February job increase.
“These numbers are a screwball’s delight,” said A. Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J. “We’re probably better off waiting for the revision.”
Times staff writers Amy Harmon in Detroit and Cristine Gonzalez in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
